The democracy stopped functioning a while ago, this is just the bills being presented.
A non-functioning democracy would be if the people voted this way and mass deportations didn’t happen. Like how immigration went up in the UK after Brexit.
That’s a fine position to have. But be candid that you’re arguing for anti-democratic institutions. It’s the same reasoning why, at the time of the founding, states restricted the franchise to property owners.
One reason we are in the current situation is because we have discarded these checks and balances, allowing for the president to behave more like an autocratic monarch. If the other branches of government were performing their constitutional function, and if the executive observed the norms it's supposed to that's when you would have a democracy not just in letter but in spirit.
(Ironically I myself am an immigrant and a naturalized citizen, yet I find I know more about American civics than most US-born.)
Look, it’s hardly settled that “democracy” is a good thing. The founders didn’t think it was—they restricted the franchise to property owners, and provided for indirect election of the president and appointment of senators by stage legislatures. Just be candid about what you’re arguing, because these distinctions matter. Jacksonian Democracy has a theory of how decisions are legitimized—by the support of the masses. If you believe that the government should sometimes do something different than what the masses want, then you need to articulate a theory for who should make those decisions and what confers legitimacy on those decisions.
canada is a monarchy and a democracy.
usa is a union of republics and a democracy
they are different dimensions
> No, democracy is supposed to be two wolves and a sheep voting on who to eat for dinner.
The senate is exactly the sheep. That the senate is now controlled by the sheep is also wild. The senate is what gives a person in Wyoming has 4x the voting power of someone in California. The senate was designed so that the less populous states (the sheep) don't get rolled. That the senate is majority minority is wild.
The Senate is orthogonal to our discussion. It implements the federalist structure of our government, representing the states themselves. That’s why the state legislatures originally appointed Senators. We have muddled up the system through direct election of senators and should probably repeal the 17th amendment.
The senate is explicitly created to give more power to minorities.
It is not orthogonal. The senate is EXACTLY the mechanism to ensure majoritarian rule is not at the expense of the minority.
The direct election vs not is not consequential. The consequential part is that states get two senators regardless of population.
Democracy is a governmental system where political power is vested in the people. It is characterized by competitive elections and the safeguarding of human rights[1].
It is by definition undemocratic for two wolves and a sheep to vote for who to eat for dinner. It is undemocratic to have gerrymandering. It is undemocratic to have uncompetitive primary elections. It is undemocratic for the police to quell protests. It is undemocratic to have state-backed propaganda, censorship, and misinformation.
Maintaining a democracy necessitates maintaining its institutions. An authoritarian one-party state does not magically become democratic just because it has an election or manufactures support for its project. Elections are an insufficient condition for democracy.
Other than that, yeah.
How do you think the people on the other side have felt till now?
The checks and balances only acted as a way to hide the true nature of government.
QE should have caught that bug before it went into production
It sounds like a contradiction, but it's not, because the critique of a democratic society doesn't have to be limited to a decision process that leads to certain behavior, but both to the problem that triggered it and the solution that the system had produced.
Over democracy: no danger for it to swing into fascism or autocracy.
Over autocracy: bad governments can be replaced.
Additionally, in practice, it should feel the same that we were having for ages when liberal parties were on power. (Proof?)
Probably this is the mythical "better than democracy" form of government that we are all waiting for?
Thoughts?
I hate to break it to you, but fascism is not the only form of autocracy.
While dramatic change to H1b wasn’t specifically on Trump’s platform, unlike mass deportations, which was second, it’s within the spirit of the dramatic change Trump promised: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform.
We rely on things other than democracy to protect minorities. Institutions, laws, restraints on power; things the committed democrat believes are unjust constraints on the Will of the People.
The voters apparently wanted more of this per the Nov 2024 elections, when we still had a credible election process.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/06/us/politics/p...
>More than 89 percent of counties in the United States shifted in favor of former President Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election, according to a New York Times analysis of election results.
I find it likelier that people’s preferences simply changed.
All 7 swing states went to Republicans due to fraud, and it just so happens that everywhere else also went more Republican.
Or all 7 swing states went to Republicans because voters voted more Republican throughout the country?
Note that not voting is the same as voting for the winning party.
Democrat leaders did not promulgate memes that there was something fishy about the Nov 2024 election results.
Land doesn't vote. People vote. What percentage of the population live in those 89% of counties?
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voter-turnou...
The extremeification of American politics by the right has totally crippled the state. Business can sometimes come in an extract wins for itself, but everyone else loses. The political gamesmanship begat by Hastert rule, where wins must never be bipartisan wins, has decayed the government, betrayed the nation.
I'm so so tired of such loud utterly decoupled unhinged sedition, against the state against reality.
My favorite recurring threads these days is a simple one: society that wants to keep functioning has to disincentivize baldfaced lying, especially by authorities
The right is pretty uniquely anti government, is enraptured by conspiracy theories and madness. Reagan strongly dismantled belief in the government. More recently we've had mass movements like the Tea Party. It was overwhelmingly people from the right who threatened, dozed, and otherwise scared the living shit out of FEMA agents trying to provide help after Helene and Milton.
It's good to criticiE the government, to want and demand better. But that's not what we are seeing from both sides. We're seeing the wholesale hegemonic suicide, the destruction of the advanced economy that has so far distinguished and given America it's power and respect, by a party that has been cheering on anti government & decoupled unhinged conspiracies and which has stoked anger and destruction for decades.
It can go two ways! But the whataboutism doesn't impress me in the least. There is overwhelming lopsidedness, of those who care and are empathetic and want better, stacked against negative creeps draining this land.
Complaints about "the whataboutism" is a strawman, to distract and deflect.
Sure there's some violent the other way too, some Chinese Robber Fallacy. But it's vanishingly small, it's not systematic, it's not the nature of the non-right at all, unlike what the right how the right has been agitating itself, pushing itself towards stochastic terrorism. There's a whole delusional crafted reality telling America my god Antifa is raging through the streets, wanton violence everywhere, you are under attack! But crime stats are way down, and from here in DC and from what Chicago tells me, it's all pure fabricated nonsense, deranged madness, terror-mongering.
I don't see both sides resorting to political violence. It's absolutely core to look at the character of the parties. Dems have tried again and again for bipartisanship, to be inclusive of of both parties. Lawful respectful hopeful charcacter abound, respect for civility & wanting good for all. Those basic traits are so vanishingly rare on the right, who has been terror-mongering & trying to shock their gullible marks into never realizing they are being preyed upon by their party, that their party is getting their interests again and again and doing everything it can to benefit the ultra-wealthy.
Lets be clear - the election was won on inflation. While a lot was said about 47th's previous record it was often brushed aside with - Sure, this was said last time too and he didn't do any of this. Its the same thing all over again, people crying wolf etc. There was even consternation about Project 2025 and many well minded people didn't believe it would be enacted.
Now the approval rating on handling of economy continues to fall day by day. Immigration was the strongest suit at +10 is now under water at -4.5.
That means while voters might have wanted something to be done about immigration but they might not wanted more of this. This will become clear only during the midterm elections. With all the efforts being made to gerrymander and gain as many seats as possible, it is good guess to say GOP also realize that people didn't want more of this - and the only way now is to hold on to power by any means necessary.
So, that it allows others to say - This government was elected in Nov 2024 and if they are doing this terrible thing then surely people have voted for this.
They saw a man (and party) make baseless accusations to overturn an election, openly support a terrorist attack on the government, and campaign on freeing those terrorists and punishing those who went after the terrorists.
And they decided this man was better than a woman, especially a black woman. Because he was a man. I’ve been told this even by a few older women, that a woman leader didn’t sit right with them. And they were non white immigrants!
This is all ignoring the myriad sex crimes, fraud, and general lack of integrity of the man.
Like them or not, Republicans have done an excellent job of nominating and running an electable candidate even if he was not embraced by the establishment. Democrats had a chance at this in 2016 and went with Hillary and the rest is of course history.
The qualifying factor being that the candidate was a man.
I do think that no one would accept this kind of mismanagement if it were to affect them.
Let's say by executive order they make tax day Feb 1st on January 30th. And everyone who's late will pay a hefty fine. See how that would go....
This is no way to make policy, no matter the form of government